Apples in Stereo

Wherefore art thou, Elephant 6? Just a handful of years ago you couldn’t tune into an American college radio station without drowning in the paisley poesy churned out by this loose collective of indie-popsters; bands like Athens’ psychedelic collagists Olivia Tremor Control and Denver’s supermelodic strummers Apples in Stereo imagined a world in which their homemade records and chummy touring practices could fuel a lifelong career. Yet when I called up head Apple Robert Schneider after the release of 2002’s Velocity in Sound, he said he’d pretty much abdicated his seat in the Elephant non-hierarchy, moving himself and wife/drummer Hilarie Sidney to Lexington to make music free of that collegial momentum. Two years later, individual bands persist, but the sense of scene seems extinguished–not necessarily a bad deal if we still get the Apples through town. Both Sidney and Schneider have taken up with side projects– her High Water Marks, his Ulysses–but let’s hope this date will find them blasting through new songs soon to be recorded.